It’s not too often that games about the Wild West come out, and even if they do, it’s rare they are something spectacular like Red Dead Redemption. Cue the new game from Ostrich Banditos, featuring a tale of vengeance in a world where you choose what is right. While not as grandiose as Rockstar’s adventure, it offers a beautiful world for you to explore – as a law abiding citizen or as death bringing outlaw.

It’s just another day on the ranch: the buffalo are running wild, your brother needs your help, and the sun is shining brighter than ever. After catching an escaped buffalo and riding him back, you find your ranch burned to the ground and your family slaughtered. Your brother hands you his gun and tells you to kill him. It’s from here that you start your journey to find the person responsible – and luckily for you, you have a clue from your now deceased brother. In your journal, you’ll have a map of the west, a list of quests you are doing/completed/failed, and all the possible characters that could have murdered your family based on clues. As you complete quests, you’ll get more clues as to who the killer is, and from there you can exact your revenge.

As you travel the west, you’ll come across people and establishments you’d expect – saloons, bankers, an oil tycoon, and more. Whether you take them up on their missions or kill them is another story. Similar to games like Way of the Samurai and The Elder Scrolls series, you can kill whoever you deem wronged you. However, you will have to face the consequences of who you kill. In my first playthrough of the game, I explored most of the map, killing outlaws and shooting off their hats with ease. When I had the murderer down to two different people, I decided to go see what was what with the oil tycoon. Speaking to his subordinates, I found out the way to get info out of him was to pull a gun on him. Turns out that didn’t work out, so I just killed everyone in the place. That didn’t make me very popular. Or rather, it made me VERY popular, but with the wrong people. Outlaws no longer shot at me, because “it’s HIM,” the guy that shot and survived the tycoon. The first person I came across in the game after my uncle told me to pull my gun on him. Upon doing so he shot me twice, so I did the same and killed him. Oops. It wasn’t until after the tycoon incident that I went back to the first town and spoke to the deceased’s wife (who was in the presence of the sheriff, and is more or less the first mission). Turns out she wasn’t too happy about my killing her husband, so she died. My self-defense didn’t bode well with the sheriff, who also fell at my hand. And that’s how you get mostly everyone to hate you.

The game has a lot of content, despite being able to finish it in less than an hour. From ghosts to weeping angels, the game has a lot of character – and a lot of references. You’ll recognize plenty of phrases, ranging from Doctor Who to Legend of Zelda to Scooby-Doo. It also has characters ranging from the townsfolk and bandits to the US military and native americans. And all of them can die by your hand. OR, you can help them. Who knows, maybe you’ll unlock them as characters to play through the game as… that’s a thing, it’s not a maybe. It also features multiple endings, obviously, as you may still have a town full of people, or a world where only you exist.

The game also offers multiple types of weapons, because what fun is the west and shooting if you can’t choose how you do it? I stuck with a rifle my first playthrough, but you can dual-wield pistols, lug around a shotgun, or even use a bola. When in battle, if you don’t have any hats, you’re dead after a single shot. The more hats you have, the more times you can be shot without blacking out and losing your money. You can either buy hats at stores, or shoot them off people and pick them up. Different hats have different abilities – for example, if you get the miner’s hat, you can see in the dark areas of the mines. It’s always a good idea to have at least one hat, as you never know who you’re going to be up against in battle.

Westerado: Double Barreled mixes the retro style of westerns like Gun.Smoke with the adventure mechanics seen in Legend of Zelda, and throws in the no holds barred attitude of “do what you like” games of today for good measure – and it works beautifully. If you’ve been looking for a good game that takes place in the West on your PC, you need look no further. You’ll be shooting faces and taking hats in no time, and you’ll love it.

BUY

Pros

Kill EVERYONE

Different Play Styles

Aesthetics

Cons

Repeating NPCs

Westerado: Double Barreled was developed by Ostrich Banditos and published by Adult Swim Games. The game was made available on PC April 16, 2015 for $14.99. The PC copy reviewed was provided for us. If you’d like to see more of Westerado: Double Barreled, check out the Ostrich Bandito’s Site.

Here at FFoP we use a rating method that you may be unfamiliar with, so allow us to clarify. When we review a game, we see what sort of BRA fits. Buy, Rent, or Acquire is the rating we give out – we’ve boiled it down for simplicity. A Buy is worth the full retail value; a Rent is something you may want to try before you buy, or grab at a discount; an Acquire is something you can play, but we’d suggest borrowing it from someone, grabbing it in a game bundle, or some other means. If you want further clarification, please feel free to get in touch.